First (& last?) snow of the winter

It was snowing here for about an hour today:
The snow was trying to stay on the ground, but couldn't. It could stay on my coat though:
It's only the 4th time I've seen snow in Hamamatsu, so it might also be the last time we see snow this winter.

p.s. Happy New Year!

Christmas lunch and dinner

Ayako and I had a quiet Christmas together. Ayako was busy making a 'Japanese Christmas" lunch, which included a vegetable Christmas tree made from mashed potatoes, broccoli, and star-shaped carrots:
The Bûche de Noël Yule log for dessert was delicious:
We had a western-style Christmas dinner (although having ham instead of turkey):
Merry Christmas everyone!

End-of-year parties

The end-of-year parties are in full swing now. I went to a couple over the weekend, although only took photos at one of them. Like last year, we visited a party thrown by a fellow Aichi University professor, Angus, seen here:
The party was thrown at an old house with many rooms and even a sunken hearth in one room, which we cooked sweet potatoes on.
There were a number of professors as well as students there. It was nice seeing some 4th-year students in a relaxed atmosphere since they have now finished writing their graduation papers.

Trip to Kobe

During the first week of November, there was a festival at my university, which meant that I was able to have a bit of a holiday. Ayako and I decided to head down to the city of Kobe for two days. We started off walking around the downtown area and quickly found a nice shrine:

We had heard that Kobe is an international city. We were amazed though at the number of gift stores selling items from one country or another. Most were from European countries but we even found a whole Muslim area with a number of restaurants and stores as well as a mosque in the area:
For lunch, we had a great recommendation from our friend Sabrina about a steakhouse called Steak Aoyama. We went there to try some Kobe beef. Here's our appetizer salad along with some Croatian beer that the chef recommended:
As for the main course, Ayako and I split a sirloin steak and a fillet steak (tenderloin) to see which we liked best:
Here's the chef cooking the food in front of us:
Since we are in Japan, he cut up the meat into bite-sized pieces so that chopsticks could be used. We had ordered our meat to be cooked medium-rare, and so each bite-sized piece was cooked medium-rare. The bread being toasted on the side was also very delicious:
Here was our meal, still on the stove to keep it warm:
The meat was very delicious and we both decided that we preferred fillet over sirloin steak. There was salt that we coat dip the meat into which had come from the Andes. They had a rock of salt beside the grinder to show us where it had come from:
In the afternoon, we continued looking around in the small stores downtown. Later on, we caught a small train to go to a small island next to Kobe. We could see the many cranes in the harbour for the boats. Ayako thought the cranes all looked like giraffes:
We found that there was an Ikea on the island, so we went for a look around to see if it differed much from the ones back home:
Most of the furniture was the same as in Canada although the furniture and things for the bathrooms were quite different. We had a small dinner in their cafeteria, which was huge and had lots of comfortable sofas to sit on:
At night, we went for a walk through Chinatown, which had lots of decorative lights along the streets:

Even the vending machine was decorated:
The next day we went for a walk through the historic area of Kobe, which has lots of historic foreign houses in it:


There were some houses that had been badly damaged during the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 that had been left and not repaired. This is a beautiful stained-glass window of a Persian building that had become overgrown in plants since the earthquake:
Since the historic area is up steep hills in Kobe, it wasn't long before you'd get thirsty. The entire area is residential, so some houses had set up vending machines outside the houses to capitalize on this small market:
We even found a Starbucks that had renovated a historic building:
There were seven rooms that you could choose from to have your coffee in. We were lucky to get one small room to ourselves. I think it was a small study previously:
With the hilly roads and the many cats that we saw, Kobe reminded me a bit of our trip to Kanazawa:
We found another cute cat at a shine that was up a steep staircase:
There was a wonderful view from the top:
We could even have a good view of some of the houses in the historic area:
...as well as a great view of the city:

In the afternoon, we went for a bus tour of the city, which let us see the rest of the city that we had missed:

After that, we headed back to the train station to get a bullet train back home. We had a great time in Kobe and were pleasantly surprised how much the city had to offer. We both agreed that it was the most pleasant of the large cities we had been to in Japan.

Tearing down a house

One of our neighbours is tearing down their house to put up a new one. We could hear the workers tearing down the house, so Ayako and I went out to take some pictures of the action:

We even got a video of the roof from one part of the house coming down:

I'll be watching the progress and will hopefully remember to show you what the new house looks like once it is built.

Local festival

Our local matsuri was held over the weekend. We went down to the elementary school to see some of the events. We had a lottery ticket and were hoping to win the top prize of a bicycle:
Unfortunately we didn't win any of the main prizes, so our parting gift was a box of tissues:
Afterwards, we walked up behind the school to the local shrine. We were given some mochi (Japanese rice cake) for coming up to visit the shrine during the festival:

Thanksgiving dinner

While Japan is celebrating Sports and Health Day on Monday, Canada was celebrating Thanksgiving, so Ayako and I invited another Canadian, Johnny, and his wife, Yoko, over for a Thanksgiving dinner:
Here we are before tucking in:
And here was this year's spread...yum yum:

Co-workers get-together

AS we did last year, we had some of my co-workers from the university over for lunch this past Sunday. Unfortunately, a few couldn't come, but luckily some new faces were there. Angus and Jon made a grand entrance in Jon's Honda S2000 sports car:
We enjoyed lots of delicious food that Ayako prepared. Angus enjoyed some bird watching:
We were lucky that it didn't rain and could enjoy a walk in the afternoon:

Meeting up with Wayne in Tokyo

About a week ago, Wayne told us he'd be in Japan on a business trip, so we were able to meet up with him in Tokyo on Saturday.
We first went to Meiji shrine and were able to see a traditional-style wedding taking place:

We then went to Harajuku and Omotesando areas to look around at the stores. There was an opening of a toy store called Kiddy Land, so we took a look around inside:
We then went down to the Shibuya area where Wayne had his photo taken with Hachiko, a famous statue of a dog:
In the afternoon, we went to go see sumo since there is a tournament on in Tokyo now. Here is Wayne and Ayako in from of the trophies the champion will win:
Here is Wayne with his co-worker, Shinji, who was with us during the day:
This was my first time watching sumo in Tokyo. There is an arena built just for sumo wrestling there and I found it to be a much nicer place to watch sumo than the large gymnasium used in Nagoya.
Here is one of the entrance ceremonies for the sumo wrestlers:
I was lucky to get a couple of pictures when another photographer's flash was going off which produced some interesting shots. The first is of a famous wrestler, Kaio, throwing salt into the ring before he enters:
The next is of the grand champion, Hakuho, preparing for his match:

Afterwards, we said goodbye to Wayne and Shinji and got the bullet train back to Hamamatsu. Here I am having a bento box dinner in the train: